Jeremy Durling

b. 1985, Lowell, Massachusetts

A painting is an investigation.  It begins with a glimpse of something beautiful.  It begins as a daydream.  Meditation, for me, is in mixing color.  It is always a joyous process, and a calm comes over me.  Through trial and error a subject can be understood.  Through error and adjustment the painting is built.  At my very best I arrive at a better understanding of what is before me in my own spatial language.  After this fashion, all of my favorite painters are truth seekers.

I fell in love with painting at Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner, MA.  I considered it a hobby at the time, until a class trip put me in front of Matisse’s ‘Red Studio’ in New York.  I was enchanted.  A year later I was studying at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.  I learned a great deal about work ethic and the finer qualities of white from Nancy McCarthy, who I was lucky enough to study with as a sophomore, and who kept me from dropping out of art school.  When I met Christopher Chippendale, his approach to painting was like hearing English spoken in an unfamiliar country.  I immediately felt I could trust him completely.  I felt the same way when I met George Nick a year later.  These two painters taught me the big lessons: drawing is just how far by how wide, at what angle.  Painting is just relating one spot of color to another.  I studied in Florence and saw some of Europe when I won the George Nick prize and found myself in Paris for Christmas that year, standing in front of another Matisse – ‘The Dream’ – which nearly brought me to tears.  It was only two colors on a canvas, but it was alive.  The real mystery for me lies in the emotional power of color.  Color has the power to stop time.  Every color is meditative.  It’s mixed.  It’s applied.  It’s removed.  It’s replaced.  Until I can truly feel the weight of the thing in front of me.  My art is driven by the conviction that when these colors are truly working, I will feel it in the pit of my stomach.  I have invested a great deal of time in finding colors that I truly love.  As Edwin Dickinson once told a young George Nick, “Love will find a way.”